Kermit Gosnell Guilty of First-Degree Murder (7783)

A jury also convicted the Philadelphia abortionist on charges of involuntary manslaughter and hundreds of lesser charges.

PHILADELPHIA — Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the West Philadelphia abortionist accused of murdering a woman and three babies who were born alive after surviving abortions, has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive but was acquitted in the death of a fourth baby.

Gosnell, 72, was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died of complications following an abortion.

The sentencing phase of the trial that lasted five weeks and saw the jury deliberate for 10 days is set to begin. Gosnell faces the death penalty, but Pennsylvania has not executed anyone since 1999.

According to court reporter J.D. Mullane, who has been in the courtroom every day of the trial, “Gosnell stood stoically, hands clasped, as the jury foreman repeated ‘Guilty of murder in the first degree’ three times.”

The timing of the verdict was a surprise to some, as, earlier today, jurors informed the judge that they were unable to reach a verdict on two of the more than 200 counts.

But common-pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart ordered the jury to reconsider the evidence and the laws and attempt to reach unanimous agreement.

The Philadelphia native originally faced seven first-degree murder charges, but Minehart dismissed three of those charges earlier in the trial.

Gosnell was found guilty of killing Baby A, Baby C and Baby D and found not guilty of killing Baby E.

On top of the murder charges, Gosnell was also found guilty of hundreds of charges, ranging from infanticide to running a corrupt organization.

Despite an almost complete media blackout initially, the trial began a public debate when it was learned that the state of Pennsylvania hadn’t inspected Gosnell’s business in 17 years. The original raid on the facility only took place due to suspicion that the site was operating as a “pill mill.”

A drug raid on the business had revealed an alleged “house of horrors” that eventually caused Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams to charge Gosnell.

Eight co-defendants have already pleaded guilty but have not yet been sentenced.

The grand jury reported that when babies were born alive in Gosnell’s facility, Gosnell and his staffers would slit their throats or stab them in the neck with scissors to sever their spinal cords. Gosnell even kept aborted babies in jars, sometimes in the same freezers where employees kept their lunches.

The abortionist even reportedly joked about the size of one his baby victims, saying, “This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.”

Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore told jurors that Gosnell forced women to deliver live babies who were then killed by staff. “The standard practice here was to slay babies. That’s what they did,” said Pescatore.

A medical assistant, Adrienne Moton, who has already pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, told the jury that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies in Gosnell’s facility. She also said Gosnell had instructed her in that method of killing babies.

The judge in the case threw out three of the eight murder charges after Gosnell’s defense attorney, Jack McMahon, argued, “If we are going … to say a baby is born alive because it moves one time without any other movement, that is ludicrous.”

Pro-Lifers Blamed

Abortion providers said justice had been served by the verdict, but also claimed Gosnell’s conviction demonstrated the need to protect abortion rights.

“This case has made clear that we must have and enforce laws that protect access to safe and legal abortion, and we must reject misguided laws that would limit women’s options and force them to seek treatment from criminals like Kermit Gosnell,” said Eric Ferrero, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's vice president for communications, in a statement.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, implied that pro-life advocacy was responsible for the fact that women suffer at the hands of abortionists like Gosnell.

Said Hogue, “Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.”

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the co-chairman of the House Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, countered that Gosnell’s actions were not fundamentally different from the killing of unborn children that occurs throughout the nation in legal abortion facilities.

“With today’s murder convictions of Dr. Gosnell, we’ve got to encourage Americans to ask: How different, really, is Gosnell’s 'House of Horrors' from abortions that occur in clinics throughout the country?” Smith asked in a statement. “Not much, not much at all.”

Added Smith, “There are Kermit Gosnells all over America — predators, child abusers, exploiters of women. Some abortionists may have cleaner sheets than Gosnell, and better sterilized equipment and better trained accomplices, but what they do — what Gosnell did — kill babies and hurt women — is the same.”

“How did Planned Parenthood react to the reversal? With euphoric celebration,” Smith said. “Years later, Edelin became the chairman of the board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America — and was given the Margaret Sanger Award in 2008. (In 2009, Planned Parenthood gave the Sanger award to Hillary Clinton.) And, like Gosnell, not a single tear for the boy murdered in Boston City Hospital.”

National Right to Life's president, Carol Tobias, compared Gosnell’s criminal actions to the deaths of babies killed in their mothers' wombs by late-term abortions carried out at Planned Parenthood facilities.

“Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder for severing the necks of just-born babies, but those babies would have died just as painfully if he had killed them inside the womb, as most late-term abortionists do,” Tobias said. “The result is the same for the baby, whether it meets its end in a shabby clinic like Gosnell’s or a brand-new Planned Parenthood facility — a painful death.”

Comments

I want to reply to Ann who said Pro-Lifers and their nonsense forces low income and poor women to seek his services because they cannot afford another child. BALONEY!! My family was poor and my mother and father raised nine (9) children. We didn’t have all the extras but we were taken care of. My parents never asked the government for a hand-out and we all grew up to be normal, law-abiding citizens. First of all, a woman doesn’t get pregnant by herself. In case you don’t know it, it takes a man and a woman. Therefore, it is not a woman’s issue It’s men who don’t take responsibility for their actions.So it was a man who came up with the idea to give a woman a pill and then she wouldn’t get pregnant so the man can satisfy his “desires” without any responsibility. And if she would happen to become pregnant, she must go through the pain and agony of an abortion. How would the man involved like to have a saline solution injected through his penis? Or perhaps have part of his inside body parts torn up by blunt surgical instruments. Think about people! This is NOT a woman’s issue. It is an issue that concerns everyone including the baby who is murdered. And Planned Parenthood is no protector of women. They are only in the business for the money!

Posted by Steve on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 3:40 PM (EST):

Sorry Jereimiah, but to have any abortion, is not justified. Period.

Posted by karl on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 2:07 PM (EST):

Re Jeremiah Dale’s logic…
where do you draw the line? If you say abortion is a good thing so a woman can decide whether or not she wants the child, why don’t we stretch late term to a time after the birth, say a week or a month or a year or whenever…women that decide their children are unwanted are murderers…whether the child is inside or outside the womb.
If “women ask for late abortions for serious and compelling reasons”, they ought to think about “serious and compelling reasons” not to get pregnant”.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 1:57 PM (EST):

Gosnell is a hero to the culture of death. Look out for the eventual presidential pardon or something like that.

Posted by John R Powers on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 1:07 PM (EST):

Give him hard labor 12 hrs a day and a cell all to himself also no tv or just watch EWTN. No computers no visitors except a pastor to help this murdering thug.

Posted by Joyrunr on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:42 PM (EST):

Unbelievable that they would blame pro-lifers for the horror of their industry of death. They peddle death to babies and when someone is brought into the light of that horror of a reality they blame those that want protection for woman and children!

Sick horrors of those that peddle death to babies! Finally, yet again, here is one of their thousands brought into the light. It’s ugly, it’s wrong, it’s not for women, it’s for blood money riches! It’s for profit! It’s your tax dollars at work! It’s a shame!

Posted by Dave Gilmer on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:25 PM (EST):

Let’s all pray that the Blessed Mother will continue to look after all the unborn, here and in Heaven, and that the Gosnell trial will mark a turning point for the better in public opinion about abortions. Apparently Gosnell is unrepentant, as were a lot of Nazis 68 years ago. May God have mercy on his soul, such as it apparently is.

Posted by tg on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:16 PM (EST):

I was praying for justice for those babies.

Posted by vance on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 11:47 AM (EST):

The shame is that a great percentage of the public is completely unaware of who Gosnell is. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN have Blacked Out the Gosnell trial and all its details. The Media Complex is so corrupt.

Posted by Proteios1 on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 7:52 AM (EST):

Sorry. I had a good comment about the smoke and mirrors world of PP and naral, but I’m too nauseous after reading about this to go into it. One question I never hear asked is what about the mental status of an abortionist and his helpers/staff. I can barely read this stuff. What type of high risk mental health factor is abortion. Even using the nicest most leftist, PC way to describe it, these people DO IT. They see it. They live it. Wat does this desensitization do to their minds?

Posted by Theresa on Monday, May 13, 2013 11:00 PM (EST):

It is God who gives life and we creatures cannit decide to end that breath of God. I pray that this Doctor will repent so that he may have life which he denied others.

Posted by Ann on Monday, May 13, 2013 10:38 PM (EST):

Eric Ferrero does make an excellent point about pro-lifers, and their continued nonsense that forces low-income and poor women to seek his services because they cannot afford another child and was sought after to alleviate the issues they had about them. If all types of abortion, regardless of how many weeks, then this would not have happened; there was a very real possibility that the woman would have dies at another clinic for complications-never mind where. Maybe if there were nurses there things were probably been a little better, but he could not afford to pay them whatever salary they were asking from him. The people there should not have helped out because they were not very well trained; however, if he never sold any prescription drugs on the side, then none of this would have been brought to light. Hopefully, the place will be cleaned up and Planned Parenthood can move in and shed a new and better light on the situation by providing good, legitimate, and legal services to all low-income and poor people who are in need of their services. Yet, he should have shouldered all the blame, so that there was to be no blame on those whom he asked to help him in his clinic.was protecting his patients by

Posted by Mary De Voe on Monday, May 13, 2013 10:22 PM (EST):

The Gosnell case is centered on the ideology that the state endows unalienable human rights at birth to the sovereign person who constitutes the state through his sovereignty even as he is newly begotten through conception. All the state can endow is citizenship. Human existence is the criterion for the objective ordering of human rights. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights of the United Nations speaks of human rights endowed through being born (Article 1). The “Creator” spoken of in our Declaration of Independence and the sovereign personhood of every person and his freedom to worship and speak of God is inscribed in our First Amendment. Roe v. Wade denied the sovereign personhood of the unborn and is a great miscarriage of Justice. The greatest miscarriage of Justice is the removal of the Supreme Sovereign Being from the memory of the citizens.

Posted by Christine Duncan on Monday, May 13, 2013 9:01 PM (EST):

I wish I could say Kermit will meet those babies face to face with explanations, but we all know they are in Heaven, and he certainly doesn’t belong there. Our Almighty Father was present in this jury room, doing what was certainly right. Thank you Jesus.

Posted by Jeremiah Dale on Monday, May 13, 2013 8:58 PM (EST):

No woman ever gets pregnant in order to have an abortion. No woman ever says to herself, “Well, I’m six weeks pregnant, but I’m going to wait and have my abortion at six months because it will be so much more fun.” Women ask for late abortions for serious and compelling reasons, and the option of late abortion must be kept open for all these tragic cases.

Posted by Tony on Monday, May 13, 2013 8:48 PM (EST):

Interesting how the media in general seemed to ignore or downplay this story. Perhaps it’s because most of them thoroughly support abortion.

Posted by mark on Monday, May 13, 2013 8:13 PM (EST):

This is how far the New Yuck Times has sunk, opening itself to ridicule from more serious news outlets like the Washington Free Beacon. “Fetuses identified as Baby A, Baby C, Baby D and Baby E” would not actually be fetuses, right? They would be babies.”
Superb and devastating line.

This is a victory for the life cause and a credit to Fr. Frank Pavone’s work, though a continued tragedy for our nation. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray, pray for us.

Posted by patrick oconnor on Monday, May 13, 2013 4:47 PM (EST):

now you can walk yourself to your jail cell!!!

Posted by Robert Hill on Monday, May 13, 2013 4:46 PM (EST):

All abortion is evil. The evidence in this case was such that not even a jury of brainwashed TV watchers could come to any other conclusion. Too bad jurors — and jurists — are so lacking in imagination; otherwise, this terrible crime would not be so legal and so common.

Posted by patrick oconnor on Monday, May 13, 2013 4:37 PM (EST):

Praise God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Listen up abortionists this could be you too!!!!!!!!!!!

Join the Discussion

We encourage a lively and honest discussion of our content. We ask that charity guide your words.
By submitting this form, you are agreeing to our discussion guidelines.
Comments are published at our discretion. We won’t publish comments that lack charity, are off topic, or are more than 400 words.
Thank you for keeping this forum thoughtful and respectful.